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"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Sorry I didn't post a postgame presser transcript. I was too busy avoiding the internet, and no one said much anyway.

Devin Gardner's redshirt paperwork will be filed soon. Hoke expects him to get his fifth year.

Hoke will talk to Taylor Lewan about the NFL draft this week.

Bowl practice will not begin until the opponent is revealed.

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file

“You guys didn’t get fed. Well, that’s poor.”

Makes us ornery.

“Yeah. You know, we’re all real disappointed in the outcome down in Columbus obviously, but one thing I can tell you is we’re really proud of this senior class. Proud because of the leadership and the development of the program that they’ve helped and their commitment to the university, and proud of how they’ve continued to lay the foundation of what we want to be as a program. It was hard. It was disappointing for them to play their last game against Ohio and not be successful like we all want to, and that’s an expectation. But we’re proud of them and we’ll have one more opportunity with them. We’ll take that very seriously.”

Brady Hoke

from file

Opening remarks:

“Obviously number one we’re very excited we have the opoprutnity play the 13th game. To be in the Sugar Bowl is exciting to all of us. We’ll start practice today, and we’ll go this weekend, next weekend, and keep it going after next weekend and kind of dodge around finals times and all those things you kind of deal with this time of year and with recruiting. We’re going to play a tremendous, great opponent in Virginia Tech, a well coached team. Frank Beamer’s done a tremendous job for many years, so it’s going to be a great challenge and be a lot of fun. We want to enjoy the atmosphere and embrace it, but we want to prepare to go win. That’s why you play in bowl games when you have that opportunity.”

You’ve done bowl prep a couple different ways. What have you found that works?

“The one thing, there’s a fine line between trying to outsmart yourself, maybe outpractice yourself a little bit and the intensity that you want to do things with. There’s a tendency sometimes to get stale -- and that can happen all year long, but you like the consistency of how you prepare, but at the same time I think you need to change it up enough. We’ll try to do that a little bit from shoulder pads to helmets the full length of practice, maybe some different drills, and those kinds of things.”

What are your thoughts on spending this time strictly for bowl prep vs. developing players for next year?

“If we had better depth at the big positions, your O-line and D-line, I think we’d do more. But when we came in we only had eight scholarship offensive linemen. Usually you’re at 15. That’s a little dicey. You’ve got to be healthy. You can’t run the race if you’re not at the start line. That’s always a part of it. We’re a little deeper at some positions, but O-line and D-line is where we’re thinnest at. You’ve got to be smart in how you transition your practice and the physicalness that you want to play with that you have to practice with. So it becomes more difficult. It’s kind of like spring ball when you don’t have a spring game. Well why don’t you have a spring game? You don’t have enough bodies. We’re still in that position obviously where we don’t have the bodies, especially at the bigs -- the big positions.”

Brady Hoke

Team will go back to fundamentals and technique during bowl practice and develop younger players.

Quinton Washington, Keith Heitzman, and Chris Rock are improving on the D-line. Coaches also trying to coach up Richard Ash.

Bowl practice schedule will depend on which bowl they go to. Team will be active this week.

Press Conference

from file

Opening remarks:

“It’s great to go out and play well enough to win. I think there’s some things we all know we have to do a better job with when you look at the whole football game, but I think our guys responded well. As a team, I’ve said it many times, but they really complement each other offensively and defensively and in the kicking game. It’s great to win a football game. Anytime you can win that great rivalry game, it’s good.”

Borges has been saying all season that the offense is eventually going to come along. Have we been seeing that the last two weeks?

“You know, I think a couple things: number one, [Denard has] grown and matured as a Michigan quarterback throughout the course of the year. I think the decisiveness that he has run the football with when he’s made that decision, that there’s some open area or whatever has really been good the last couple weeks. I think that’s helped his confidence. I thought he ran extremely hard with the ball on Saturday. When we can rush the ball for 277 yards, it helps you obviously when you get into the throw game. And in the passing game, I thought he made three really good throw again. He was 14 of 17, so his accuracy and completion rate was pretty doggone good. I think he just keeps growing.”

What was the mood like the last 36 hours? Have you been hearing from a lot of people?

“Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of text messages that I haven’t even seen yet to be honest with you. It’s nice and it’s great that people want to congratulate you, but we’re not done with this year yet. Our goal was to win the conference championship and we didn’t do that, so we have a lot more to prove.”

What do you think about the Urban Meyer hire?

“You know, he’s not going to play a down and neither am I. To me, I’ve known Urban. He’s a good football coach. He’s a good guy, I’ll welcome him in, but this is still Michigan and Ohio. It’s still going to be that rivalry. Neither one of us is going to play a game.”